Printing ASCII “Art” Like it’s 1980!

[@TimoNoko]

I made TV-camera digitizer in 1979 just for the purpose for producing realistic Ascii-art. One Mona Lisa in archives was definitively mine.

[@igot2muchfreetime]

That is pretty wild for 79! Would love to see how something like that was done on period hardware.

[@Mrshoujo]

I found a utility for the Atari 8-bit which would convert ASCII back into graphics.

[@TimoNoko]

Fairly simple to do, you just count the TV-lines and sample one dot from that line with a horizontal timer. So it was not fast but fairly good on 500-line Black and White camera.

[@lasskinn474]

@@TimoNoko 1 dot / frame? some people later in 80s would overlay images on the monitor itself

[@supercompooper]

I did same on an amiga! I made a parallel port video digitizer!

[@SheeplessNW6]

As soon as you said CAL82, I knew it would be a Snoopy calendar!

[@vinny142]

I remember my dad taking me to his workplace when I was in my early teens to show me the computers. He didn't understand them, he was a craftsman, but he knew I was fascinated by them. The men working on the computer where fixing the printer and when they saw me basically drooling over this magnificent machine they turned it on to show how it printed and they printed this exact calendar. At the time I was more interested in the absurd speed at which the image was printed than the girl but I think I still have that print somewhere.

[@SammyForReal]

That's amazing honestly

[@mal2ksc]

And this goes about half the speed of an IBM line printer!

[@galaxybrian8039]

i think currently you are the channel that I'm most excited to see upload! your energy is just infectious and even though I know almost nothing about the technology you are working on, i find every single video you produce absolutely fascinating! I hope to see you continue to grow, you really deserve the success after all your hard work!

[@JamesHalfHorse]

Was wanting to say similar. The tech is awesome but his excitement/enthusiasm is what really sells it.

[@UsagiElectric]

Thank you so much! I get excited when the electrons do what I want them to, haha.

[@JamesHalfHorse]

@@UsagiElectric I do it for a living. It's a great feeling when it all just works especially with little/no rud, magic smoke, angry pixies or flames.

[@MarcGini-i2j]

My old work had a system that ran off 8inch floppies and printed using dot matrix onto that tractor paper ( of course that was in the 80’s and it was old then). Your channel reminded me of that old system and my fascination for old systems in general, i can’t wait for your next video.

[@rickhole]

Great episode! I was not at all surprised that reforming the cap (the easy way, yet!) fixed the jitter. Take heart, that 1982 calendar will be usable in 2027.

[@pdrg]

I have and will never see or use a Centurion, but have enjoyed the series just because of your natural enthusiasm pulling me in :)

[@UsagiElectric]

Thank you so much!

[@vojtechtomes6231]

Turning the lock by using the handle of a rake pick was the funniest part of the video for me :D

[@EDDY-to2hf]

This dude took lock picking to a whole new level

[@ScottHenion]

Back in the old days, I worked for a company that among other things sold line printers. The text file we would print as a test was a Mona Lisa image that spanned 2 sheets wide a 4 high you taped together. It did 4 passes on each line. It was impressive. We did chain and band printers up to 2500 lines a minute. Old mechanical stuff was always interesting to watch.

[@DanielCoffey67]

I have a vague memory of seeing an image like that at my secondary school in the UK in about 1980. They were fiddling with a large late 70's era rack mounted computer before it was scrapped and there was this Mona Lisa image being shown around. Hardware-wise it was later than vacuum tube and had the pea-sized metal can transistors as well as the ones in the large flat metal packages with a mica separator. There were a lot of discrete boards in racks that were around the size of a hardback book.

[@UsagiElectric]

Up to 2500 lines per minute? That's insanely fast! It must have slung the paper out the top at a ridiculous rate. That would definitely be a sight to see for sure!

[@loginregional]

I said, ...ay... zee... uck.... Whassat? Put the cover back down. It's an incredible racket! Centurions' THIRD racket! (10Q Basil)

[@ScottHenion]

@@UsagiElectric The "analog guru" passed the prototype to me. He had made the analog paper control board. Told me "write to these registers the distance to advance paper. Did a test and mistakenly swapped the 2, 8-bit regs. So instead of advancing about 2 lines, FOUR FEET of paper shot straight up out of the printer in less tan a sec. The printer was basically two band printer heads cascaded, each printed the odd or even lines.

[@yadbor]

My wife's uncle has the Digital Mona print - from back in the day when he was the local Control Data manager. The old ones are quite collectable. I learned to program on a CDC Cyber with one of the *fast* line printers - and yes, form feed could fountain paper up several feet.

[@HobbyHalloween]

Of course we all wanted to see Girl82... thanks for the link in the notes... It's not too spicy, it's just ASCII or you can call it Spicy ASCII!!! Hey, that kind of rhymes 🙂

[@Toothily]

“Smut is the best kind of art” - Andy Warhol, probably

[@UsagiElectric]

I could believe it, haha.

[@crbielert]

To be honest there's probably decent money in line printer ASCII pinups on Etsy.

[@alunroberts1439]

as long as it not my mother

[@mal2ksc]

It's certainly the most _popular_ kind of art. Thor of Pirate Software recently put out a Short about "Time To P3nis" stating that the moment you give the users the freedom to make whatever they want, they'll draw d!cks.

[@l337pwnage]

I know Hollywood constantly promotes him, but I'm not sure how many would have a reference other than they constantly mention his names in movies. I can definitely create a list of people who've basically said that, but it wouldn't be youtube safe, lol.

[@senilyDeluxe]

Now print a giant HELLORLD banner!

[@Robert08010]

LOL.

[@wood0366]

Next step is to port The Print Shop to the Centurion so you can print banners.

[@polybius223]

LGR lol

[@rwdplz1]

@@polybius223Cool Crab on Centurion

[@TheVintageApplianceEmporium]

You've done an incredible job David. Really enjoyed the journey so far :)

[@UsagiElectric]

Thank you so much!

[@mikefochtman7164]

My brother told a story about messing around with the driver code on his system for printer like that but slightly faster (supposedly 300 LPM). His story was one day something got wrong and it started doing just VT's constantly. Since the cover was open, before he could stop it paper was shooting straight up out of the thing and about 20-30 feet of 'green bar' was laying all over the floor. Watching yours brings back memories, a key part of being a programmer back then was printing out the listings and binding them up to hang in the cabinet. Ahhh... it was somewhat sad when we finally stopped and threw all those 10-15 year old listings out to clear out the cabinets.

[@markm49]

Cool - my first job in IT back in 1989 was as a OPs person working on some Burroughs kit. This was at a debt collection agency in the UK and we had to send out thousands of letters to customers each week -to facilitate this we used chain(or band as we called them) printers. My job was to clean the bands every Friday with a cotton bud and isopropyl. Good times.

[@DMahalko]

10:53 I'm glad my question about old ribbon re-inking helped, lol.

[@iGregory67]

Wow... that sound brings back memories... back in the 80's I work evenings as a Computer Operators. I ran two Sperry/Univac mainframes, running jobs that would process orders that were entered during the day and generating reports, invoices, pick/pack lists, etc... that printer sound really brings me back.

[@bigpapab]

Congrats on all your hard work!

[@donkimble]

Man this takes me way back. It was probably 1978, I was about 7, and my dad took me to the local university computer lab. It was HUGE. No clue what it was now, but the computer scientist was nice and printed out an ascii JFK portrait for me on green and white striped paper. I kept it for years. I wish I still had it!

[@AllanDeal]

Sunday afternoon geeking I’m always here for it

[@dennisp.2147]

I remember going to the kids Christmas party at my dad's work in 1982. The AV department were printing out ASCII art Christmas posters and other stuff. I got one that had Burt Reynolds as "the Bandit" that I kept for many years

[@neilbarnett3046]

Our Snoopy prints used to get the same priority as any undergraduate work. We used to have to punch our own card for these in 1976.

[@lorensims4846]

We had a taller IBM lineprinter to go with our AS/400, from about five years after your system. It had a slightly lower pitch when it operated than your machine does. It was a real workhorse for us. Re-inking seems to have gone well, but it still looks too light to me. Yeah, ASCII "art" was all the rage at the time, and most of it was NSFW. Happy minicomputer to you!

[@MeisterTheFunk]

I grew up in Leeds, UK. A family friend invited us to his work around 1979, which was IBM in Crossgates (suburb of Leeds). We were able to use the terminals connected to some type of IBM machine and print out things, one of the prints being a snoopy calendar just like yours 👍 This was one of the moments that got me into IT.

[@pamdemonia]

Did not realize centronics connectors for printers were that old. Amazing.

[@hubbsllc]

They’re as old as…well, Centronics printers!

[@jimsimpson1006]

I remember ASCII art and using the ANSI driver to produce crude animations in color. So long ago I don't even remember how I did it.

[@rty1955]

I have tons of EBCDIC art. I worked on a 360 mainframe where you have much more control over a printer. For example you can print many lines over another for denser print just by setting the first byte of a print line. The images were on cards, but I copied them to 9 track tape. I also wrote a banner program on just two punch cards! you booted the mainframe from these two cards. since each card was 80 bytes, the entire program was less than 160 bytes! I did that in 1972. we also printed at 1200LPM too later on printed at 18,000 lpm!

[@frankowalker4662]

Those bunnies are looking good and healthy. You've done great work on them, too.

[@timothyp8947]

Have followed this series from the start - really impressive that it’s reached the point where it can be used 'end to end' - from data input through to hard copy. Fantastic work bringing this piece of computer archeology back to life! And now you’re on to the second cabinet.

[@skfalpink123]

Absolutely brilliant stuff and a joy to see it working! That is the noise of my first days at work. Massive printers thrashing away, fighting the sound of a hundred cooling fans. The main thing I remember is always feeling cold, and that tea or coffee had to be drunk within minutes. In fact, it was so cold that many of us would work in thermal overalls..

[@TeslaTales59]

You can show it! It's calmer than most YT pics. Funny, I do remember "Girl82" on a Printronix.

[@gcspence]

I come here to watch these videos as much for the tech as for your enthusiasm! As another commenter stated, your energy and excitement are infectious! Keep up the good work!

[@mikethespike7579]

We were doing ASCII art like that already in the early 1970s on our university mainframe. Storing all that on the university hard-drives or tapes was forbidden, so we used IBM puncture cards. One picture would take up to a shoebox full of cards. Nice to see these old machines and the art still being appreciated.

[@RonJohn63]

EBCDIC arts?

[@mikethespike7579]

@@RonJohn63 Yeah, I heard it called that. We saw print-outs around 1971-72 from guys who had come back from visiting the US and thought that we can do that and even improve on it. We got so far as to give our depictions realistic shading (Astrix and Oblix, Peter Pan etc.), but it was a hell of a lot of work. Printing those was hard on the university printers, it wore out the ink bands super fast and the technician who looked after the hardware, was getting fed up.

[@RonJohn63]

@@mikethespike7579 note that it's EBCDIC art *on the mainframe* because *mainframes use EBCDIC.* Everything else uses ASCII.

[@mikethespike7579]

@@RonJohn63 I hadn't a clue about all this at the time. We were mostly mechanical and electrical engineering students - at that time these fields didn't use computers - and were just fascinated that these machines could produce such graphics. BTW, later a music student came along and suggested making music with a computer. I helped to develop the interface connecting the computer to an electronic organ. These days we'd call that a sound card, it took up the load area of a small truck. The press here in Germany went crazy when they found out, we even presented the equipment on TV. We sold a few of these to rock musicians, one of them Frank Zappa and the other Kraftwerk. Those were crazy days.

[@RonJohn63]

@@mikethespike7579 interesting story.

[@ce.nz0]

I've had success restoring rather than re-inking old ribbons (for IBM Selectric typewriters). I tried a few methods and the best was using 100-weight synthetic gear oil. A few drops around the edge of the ribbon spool, let it soak in for several days. This reactivated the ink pretty well. I also tried WD-40, 3-in1 oil, and transmission fluid. All of those worked pretty well, but a couple weeks later the ribbon was dry again. The gear oil ribbon has been going strong for 2 years now. I've tried stamp pad ink too, but the ribbons always ended up too inky (the dried ink already in it got sludgy) and didn't print as cleanly.

[@wdavem]

WOW!! You've made me VERY envious of your success, even though I don't want one of those. And that's PERFECT!! I have so much respect for you! NEVER thought I'd see a chain printer that works connected to all that. I do work with other big old complicated stuff though; so I can feel you excitement.

[@iand5600]

Still remember the CDC fast train printer I once worked on. Even faster that these band type printers. Had slugs with the letters on and teeth on the back and a whole set of them flew around a track in front of the paper. There were 3 whole duplicate sets of characters to reduce the time it took to get the right letter in front of the right hammer. Was maybe 3 times as fast as your printer. When you did a form feed it was so fast it threw a loop in the paper into the air until gravity pulled it back down into the output bin. Was connected up to some CDC Cyber mainframes.

[@douglascrawford2563]

Congratulations Dave on the so impressive fully functioning system! It's so awesome! Very inspiring!

[@GentryBa1]

You are my favourite youtuber related to old computers!

[@brentchristopherson713]

You are amazing. Your never say die attitude and enthusiasm for diving in head first into projects is a inspiration for all who follow you.

[@theantipope4354]

4:40 As well as that 32V ripple capacitor reforming with use, it's also likely that the oscillating mechanism was loosening up the dried up lubrication in the moving parts. I do hope you lubricated that mechanism after you cleaned it.

[@lordmuaddib]

Usagi Denki going viral with ecchi stuff let's go :D i mean, the insides of that printer are quite something! jokes aside, another amazing restoration! as a kid of the 80s i missed that era of mainframes completely and yet i can see the beauty of working on them thanks to channels like yours. keep going man!

[@farmallpaul4518]

I would pay $ for a printout of GIRL82 for my man-cave! You should put some copies in your Merch...

[@chrisdwalton]

That wide fanfold paper was like a big screen monitor back in the day! I remember printing out code listings, then sitting at a desk looking for bugs and optimizing the code by hand. The fanfolds made it easy to go forward and backwards, and the space on the right was great for drawing diagrams and making notes. I still occasionally print out sections of code when I really want to understand the details!

[@AndrewTubbiolo]

I was a 132 col tractor paper monger as a kid. I LOVED to use them to draw on and make big paper toys. My best was a paper colonial viper from Battle Star Galactica. I also made model airliners like the 727 and DC-9. That paper was the best raw material for kids to play with.

[@ChozoSR388]

Why can't printers today sound like that anymore? I don't remember what brand it was, but my dad used to have this old dot matrix printer, and I could just sit there and listen to it for hours. Such a magical sound. And THIS. This sounds even better than that did!

[@danw1955]

Hey, nice job on the Data 100 printer David!! The stamp pad ink *should* last for quite a while since it dries fairly slowly. I would imagine it would be a fairly simple deal to conjure up a re-inking station with some spare parts you have lying around, and a bit of ingenuity. The ASCII art is great! I did a fair amount of that in the late 1980's with my first 80286 PC, and an Epson MX-80, 9 pin, dot matrix printer. I must have worn out 5 or 6 ribbons on that dumb thing, and at least a full box of fan-fold 8 1/2 x 11 tractor-feed paper! (just on ASCII art).🤣 I can't remember the name of the program, but there was something that ran in MS-DOS 3.3 that would do large banners that would span as many pages as you cared to make, with huge letters in several different fonts. I used it to make a sign to hang over the door of my office with my business name for the first few years I was in the IT biz!😉

[@V0ngard3n]

Got yourself another subscriber thanks for all the nice thing you bring back to life

[@antman2919]

Just wanted to say that I've been watching your videos now for a while now and absolutely loving the content. Keep up the great work.

[@mikebartlett6356]

Thanks for another fascinating episode. I love your enthusiasm and joy when things work. Congratulations on a full set for the Centurion. Keep up the great work!

[@jtang42]

Thanks for another great video! This is a such a cool computer system and I love that the Data 100 was built just 5 miles down the road from me.

[@Terry-x2n8s]

When I was 15 in the 90s, I had a PS/2 386 and an Epson dot matrix. Maaaan the ascii art we got on disks that we bought down the market was excellent. I had a full wall height asciiart printout of Sandra Bullock, printed on line paper and taped together. Those were the days eh

[@rsluggy6485]

Long ago, my company had a Fujitsu band printer that was spec'd at 600 lines per minute and the previous job had two, a 600 LPM and 1200 LPM. They had 132 hammers, so no shuttle needed. The previous job also had a Printronix P800, a 800 LPM *dot matrix* printer. It had a gob of direct hammer pins, mounted on a shuttle and it advanced the paper one dot line at a time and this flurry of activity spewed paper out pretty fast. As I remember it, the ribbons for that printer look like the ribbon for your Data 100 and they are still available. You might be able to just get a new or new old stock ribbon for it.

[@kelli217]

What went through my head when you said, “I’m going to print a few more things,” was that you should print out some source code since that’s usually fairly long and sometimes you need more than a single screenful in order to understand what’s going on. So it’s both demonstrative and useful.

[@ViegasSilva]

She's based on '70s ASCII art 'Deborah', look it up!

[@timc3600]

60 inches per second -- in a Rabbit. Nice. Good to see the printer working, but now we are all puzzled about Girl82 !! You should sell prints in your store.

[@8bitwiz_]

I think you meant to say "T-shirts". Helloooorld Girl82!

[@deemstyle]

I agree. A print on that striped continuous paper would be an incredible art piece to hang in the garage!

[@EmmanuelRAYMOND69]

6:12 LockPickingLawyer inside !! 😂

[@peterweingartner4364]

This has reminded me of a time when I was a kid and my family went to a beach town one summer. On the boardwalk, there was a vendor who had a camera, a computer, and a line printer. They took a picture of my sister and printed it out as ASCII art on the line printer. I don't know whatever happened to that picture, but I remember being amazed by the whole thing. Also.. nice to see that the baby bunnies are doing well and are being spoiled with tasty herbs.

[@8bitwiz_]

It was a thing in the '80s for sure. In parts of the world without a beach, you might find them in a shopping mall kiosk. Usually they were dot-matrix and ran each line multiple times to create a darker image without a bunch of letters on the page. Somewhere I still have such a printout of myself, my brother, and somehow I ended up with a printout of a co-worker at my first job in 1982. (it probably tagged along with some printouts that I had taken home) There was a computer that Adrian worked on a few months ago with a video capture card that was probably used exactly for one of those picture printing computers.

[@mrb.5610]

Oh, I remember that one ! Wonder what the history behind that is.... I also remember some very low res BBC Micro 'images' that wouldn't pass muster on KZbin either - took about a minute to load up from a floppy....in colour too ... well, red and green dots anyway.

[@andromedaturnbull3512]

Fantastic work! Some of these band printers were still kicking about in production in the early 2000s. I recall that the lab VAX at college had one for the VMS system log that was eventually sadly disposed of; it was replaced by a far less exciting HP LaserJet with some sort of adapter. Finally, thanks so much for uploading the file! The file is a wonderful time capsule, although disappointingly tame by modern standards.

[@paulalmquist5683]

@4:42 and @18:50 and likely elsewhere there is a knob visible on both sides of the printer. What are those for? Some printers have a control called "Print Density" or something similar. It could be a lever instead of a knob. It adjusts the spacing between the print hammers and ribbon to make the print image darker or lighters.

[@UpLateGeek]

Those printers always freaked me out when running open. Nice job getting it all working! The sound deadening makes a huge difference, even through the camera, I can tell you were yelling less loudly after it was all finished and buttoned up at the end.

[@jarms40]

Congratulations on getting the full Centurion system up and running. These disk drives (particularly the Finch) were so darn challenging. Glad to have a relatively easy W on the printer to finish things out. Now you can get to the important work of doing mid-80s oil and gas accounting. Oh boy! Are we in for some fun or what?

[@davida1hiwaaynet]

Epic, and hilarious! Thank you for sharing this. It's amazing it works so well!

[@asicdathens]

I saw an HP dot matrix printer that had a huge head capable of printing an entire line at once. This thing was loud that you needed a soundproofed room to use it. It used a SCSI variation called HP-1 to connect to a computer.

[@MDBenson]

What an awesome video - so great to see the entire Centurion setup come together! Also good to see the tiny buns are doing okay.

[@CrimsonPenny]

this guy needs to be more known to the public! What he does is really awesome!

[@fantummenelkinstruments1959]

I had a cassette of various programs and other stuff for our VIC-20 in the early eighties. Girl82 was one of the files on it. Lol. It looked exactly the same when printed on the Commodore matrix printer.

[@wa4aos]

Congrats on getting to where you are now with the Centurion system and peripherals !!! I worked as an FE with Kalbro corp, later bought out by Decision One, then DEC through the early 80's - late 90's and worked with all of the drives you have and the printer plus many more line printers; not to mention the MANY systems I was responsible for.. Your work is bringing back a flood of great memories and a few nightmares, LOL, of those days. I will let you know, for sure, that printer is capable of printing much darker than what it is now, just get a new ribbon and you'll see !!! LOL Who knows, maybe a case or two of those ribbons will surface as others see your videos. Best to you and thanks for so many GREAT videos and my trip down memory lane !!

[@Starphot]

I remember ASCII art aboard my Navy ship in 1973. I had security watch one night with a mate from the computer room. It was in our patrol area and he showed me his work compartment. He had a calendar on the bulkhead similar to the girlie one you shown but the image was made up using letter ink weights for better detail.

[@rustycherkas8229]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane... Back in 1980-81, the new-hire operator moved his desk to isolate/remove himself from the dept as much as possible; a "recluse". I had to chuckle when I noticed him using his "free time" keying in ASCII art from a printout discretely covered by other pages. Undoubtedly he wanted/needed more copies of "Girl" to share-with/sell-to out-of-work contacts. He didn't last long in the position...

[@tehlaser]

I have no idea if this is “safe” or not, but I’ve successfully re-inked an atypically-sized typewriter ribbon with black stamp pad ink. I did it by holding the typewriter ribbon spool vertically and putting a few drops directly from the refill bottle onto the outside of the ribbon at the “top” of the spool, waiting a few seconds for it to soak in, then rotating the spool about 1/8th of a turn and repeating until I got back to where I started. The ink didn’t make it all the way to the hub of the spool, so I wound the ribbon over to the other spool and repeated the process from that side. Never used the actual stamp “pad” at all, except for playing around with rubber stamps later.

[@thomas-i5o7h]

Wow ! I love those calendars !! Those are sooo cool to see !!!!

[@SuperHaunts]

I grew up with a huge ASCII art photo of Albert Eisenstein on my bedroom wall .(2 sheets 132 wide, side by side), by 4 pages tall, printed on the backside of Greybar paper.

[@joeysartain6056]

What about the platten? Could it have dried out and gotten too hard over the years? Would a "softer" platten help the print quality?

[@markramsell454]

We used a printer similar to that. It had a dot matrix block that spanned the width of the green bar paper. It could print a line all at once which was loud but very fast. My 6502 listing took about 4 hours, but it was a long program that fit in 4 banks of 32K and 16K of non-banked code.

[@anthonywilliams7052]

Reink the sponge that reinks the ribbon, use a bottle of stamp pad ink, which looks like roll-on deodorant but turn it upside down and squeeze and get a few drops out at a time. Maybe just a few sparingly on the ribbon. You might have to poke a little hole next to the roller. It worked great for my old 80s dot matrix printer at least until the sponge turned to dust after 40 years. Looking for another sponge now.

[@goatman7362]

This is the stuff I love, incredibly complicated, over-engineered mechanical machines!

[@fixitalex]

This is great! My congratulations colleague! BTW Could you share girl82 somewhere?

[@greenerell484]

see the description

[@macgvrs]

Amazing that this old stuff still works, especially as well as it does. Of course, kudos to the one who made it work. I suspect our modern printers won't be around nearly as long.

[@AnonymousAnarchist2]

Oh, our modern *industrial* inkjet printers will last. They are fantasticly simple and durable.

[@macgvrs]

@@AnonymousAnarchist2 I guess time will tell. I have worked on many of those and I have my doubts.

[@AllFirstHand]

We had a printer exactly like that on a Naval ship. I think it was called the B600. The cover was to reduce the sound it made. It was very noisy.

[@Robert08010]

I used to work in a data center from 86 to 91. We had 2 printers that were similar to the IBM 5211. They used a high speed metal band with letters sticking out of the band. But the hammers didn't have to move side to side at all. They just had 132 hammers. This puppy could spit out a page full of text in just a few seconds. The main reason why we had it was for printing forms that had carbon copies. So orders and waybills and such. It was a supermarket chain so there were lots of multipart forms. Then they also had 3 IBM 3800 laser printers. Those could go through an entire box of paper (a stack of fan fold paper about 16 - 18 inched high) in about 5 minutes.

[@helldog3105]

This is really great work. I have always wanted to see these kinds of machines in person. We had a computer history museum locally, but the pandemic caused it to close down, and so there are no machines like this close to me. I hope some day I can make it to a VCF show that you are attending to see the mini PDP-11. May you have a fantastic week!

[@ianroughley1933]

That "pint out" looks just like one I had on my wall in the 80'S. Raquel Welch, topless. My aunt was programmer back then and she gave it to me.....amazing 😁

[@cleverson_sa_]

Congratulations getting all the whole Centurion setup working!

[@p-196]

the stamp ink should hold longer than 2 weeks. I buoght a stamp pad in 2022 and now, we have 2024 and it still works perfectly with the ink that was filled in by the factory.

[@williambillbyrd1824]

I had that Snoopy calendar! My aunt was a systems analyst and gave it to me!

[@cieludbjrg4706]

Damn, I remember being in the same room as one (or more) of these back in the early 1980s (-84 or so). The speed was indeed incredible! My mom used to bring home sheafs of printouts for us kids to use (the reverse...) for drawing, and everywhere in the university you'd see all kinds of lists made on these. Ahh, those were the days!!!😄

[@your_utube]

In the 80's I used to print out stuff from my ZX Spectrum using a Centronix interface and parallel port cable connected to a dot matrix printer. What fun that was!

[@Justin-TPG]

We only had the Sinclair silver toilet roll printer and it was misaligned so there was always fun trying to determine between : and ; on old listings.

[@JV-pu8kx]

There is a re-inking machine available, I forget the brand name. We had two of them. Countless miles of ribbon re-inked. It worked by dragging the ribbon along an ink reservoir with a pin hole that applied the liquid ink to the ribbon at a constant speed.

[@redheadsg1]

I subscribed to your channel after 2nd or 3rd Centurion video (the one that Clint from LGR commented) and it was a quite a journey in these 2-3 years. Thank you.

[@MakersEase]

I took so many of these line printers apart when I was a kid.. My dad bought a whole bunch of mainframe stuff from the local college.. (mid 80's) . I know at least one of the printers had a spinning drum with all the characters on it..

[@geoviewer5113]

Ah, yes. Evvery week I would have to adjust the printer interposers to vertically align the characters in a line of print. You could always tell the printout was printed on a drum printer because the characters weren’t vertacally aligned.

[@igormoreno3464]

I really like the music shout outs, really helps finding awesome new stuff. :)

[@wtmayhew]

Superb restoration! Thank you for your tireless work.

[@pklausspk]

This is great. I wish I could see the Ericsson 230 I was teached on in 1980 working like this one.

[@ejcrashed]

I Absolutely feel your excitement, you are the Centurion king right now.

[@markhatch1267]

Every time I see one of these old school line printers in action, I am just in awe of a mechanical mechanism that can do so much, so fast, with such precision! I had the privilege of starting my computer science experience in high school on an aging NCR Century 100 minicomputer in 1980. The line printer was 132 columns, with a slim disk/ring of printable characters for every column, and it smacked out a whole line of text in a single strike. It made a very rapid muted tapping sound like a soft machine gun. If I remember correctly, it's claimed speed was 600 lines (10 pages) per minute. One memory I have of my CS teacher, as I entered the classroom/computer room one morning, was seeing him crouched in front of the printer with ink all over his hands, installing the huge ribbon (after re-inking) the thing had. I was rather surprised to see it was as wide as the entire carriage. What an amazing piece of machinery. By the time I graduated in 1982, it was being phased out to be replaced by a low end IBM System 36. It had what they called a band printer, that was similar in layout, but slower (far fewer hammers) than a chain printer like yours.

[@ricardobornman1698]

So happy to see the system finally coming together. Well done! 🤙

[@henriklarsson1389]

Reminds me of my old Commodore mps1230. A 9pin printer where i did the same to save money. Bought stamp ink and put that on the ribbon directly. The 9 pin ribbon was the same widh as the bottle top. So some luck with that. But i remember that the stamp ink never lasted as long as the original. And adding too much simply made a mess when printing.

[@ferrari2k]

Nice to see that 1982 calendar, you almost showed my birthday :D But I now know it was a wednesday... ;)

[@BOBXFILES2374a]

I remember green/white paper from 1985! "Burst and decollate" - manually. Every man has a dream!